fishfreak0114 Posted December 31, 2016 Share Posted December 31, 2016 Micro brittles are the best! I have tons of minuscule white ones. 1 Quote Link to comment
FlowerMama Posted January 1, 2017 Share Posted January 1, 2017 SO much work but it'll be worth it. That last pic, they all look so darn obedient and cute! 1 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 2, 2017 Author Share Posted January 2, 2017 Micro brittles are the best! I have tons of minuscule white ones. Yeah, there's a lot to like about them. Hopefully I'll end up with more of them. SO much work but it'll be worth it. That last pic, they all look so darn obedient and cute! Thanks, they are pretty great dogs. Especially when they think there's a treat involved Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 2, 2017 Author Share Posted January 2, 2017 Here's what the tank looks like (temporarily) now. It looks clean, but right after taking this picture I blew off the rocks and it was like a blizzard. I'm just going to keep cleaning the rocks and vacuuming the sand every few days until it stabilizes. 2017-01-01 IM10 FTS by TeenyReef, on Flickr In the meantime, all the frags are in the 40g and the monticap pieces have taken over the frag tank. 20170101-untitled-001-2.jpg by TeenyReef, on Flickr 6 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 2, 2017 Author Share Posted January 2, 2017 Seeing the upside down nerite snail in the FTS reminded me...three out of the four nerites have woken up and are cruising around the tank. I'm going to give the last guy one more day before tossing him. 1 Quote Link to comment
ninjamyst Posted January 2, 2017 Share Posted January 2, 2017 Since I don't have any nice tank pictures today, I'll make up for it with a dog picture 20161230_215346.jpg by TeenyReef, on Flickr sooo cute! 1 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 6, 2017 Author Share Posted January 6, 2017 After three days, the fourth nerite woke up! And three of them are actually cruising around on the rocks doing their thing, instead of lazing around in the upper corner of the tank like most nerites do. 4 Quote Link to comment
vlangel Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 After three days, the fourth nerite woke up! And three of them are actually cruising around on the rocks doing their thing, instead of lazing around in the upper corner of the tank like most nerites do. I guess they heard their fate and are trying to appeal to you by showing some sort of work ethic, ha ha! 1 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 6, 2017 Author Share Posted January 6, 2017 I guess they heard their fate and are trying to appeal to you by showing some sort of work ethic, ha ha! Yep, they're scared straight! 1 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 12, 2017 Author Share Posted January 12, 2017 The soft reboot is going fairly well so far. Last Friday I gave the back chambers, the skimmer, and the pump a complete cleaning and siphoned out a ton of crap as part of a two gallon water change. Then on Sunday I did one more scrub on the back rocks and vacuumed the sand again, and did a four gallon water change. Before I did the scrub on the back rocks, I did see some minor signs of the white algae (or whatever it is) coming back, but I plan to continue scrubbing the rocks until it stops coming back. I broke up the monticaps some more. I get two advantages from that - first, it ensures I don't put any dead pieces of monticap back in the tank because algae grows on it. Second, the caps were getting too big anyway, so I'm resetting them back to small pieces and reducing the shading of the rocks and sandbed. So I have a whole bunch of monticap frags if anyone's interested. I'll probably post a sale thread for them in another month or two once the weather warms up, although I could ship to the warmer states now as long as I do it during a week when the weather's warm here. I glue the smaller frags to individual rocks, and left the rocks piled together with no glue, so that I can keep pulilng them out to get scrubbed and to vacuum the sand. I'm going to leave it that way permanently so I'll be able to do a much better job of keeping the sand bed clean. The new clean up crew is doing well, the emerald crab has been very busy and I see snails all over the place so I know they're finding stuff to eat. After the first few rounds of cleaning, nitrates spiked up to 16, but last week they went down to 12, and this week they're down to 8. So I think things are heading in the right direction. I've been using some GFO, and phosphates are holding steady at about .1 after spiking to .2. I don't want it to go down any more until the nitrates go down, so I'm keeping the gfo in small amounts and not changing it often. I move the ricordea rock back here from the 40g about a week ago, and so far they're all doing fine, as are all the corals that I kept in this tank. So I'm optimistic that things aren't getting worse any more, and they seem to be getting better. Fingers crossed! 9 Quote Link to comment
vlangel Posted January 13, 2017 Share Posted January 13, 2017 The soft reboot is going fairly well so far. Last Friday I gave the back chambers, the skimmer, and the pump a complete cleaning and siphoned out a ton of crap as part of a two gallon water change. Then on Sunday I did one more scrub on the back rocks and vacuumed the sand again, and did a four gallon water change. Before I did the scrub on the back rocks, I did see some minor signs of the white algae (or whatever it is) coming back, but I plan to continue scrubbing the rocks until it stops coming back. I broke up the monticaps some more. I get two advantages from that - first, it ensures I don't put any dead pieces of monticap back in the tank because algae grows on it. Second, the caps were getting too big anyway, so I'm resetting them back to small pieces and reducing the shading of the rocks and sandbed. So I have a whole bunch of monticap frags if anyone's interested. I'll probably post a sale thread for them in another month or two once the weather warms up, although I could ship to the warmer states now as long as I do it during a week when the weather's warm here. I glue the smaller frags to individual rocks, and left the rocks piled together with no glue, so that I can keep pulilng them out to get scrubbed and to vacuum the sand. I'm going to leave it that way permanently so I'll be able to do a much better job of keeping the sand bed clean. The new clean up crew is doing well, the emerald crab has been very busy and I see snails all over the place so I know they're finding stuff to eat. After the first few rounds of cleaning, nitrates spiked up to 16, but last week they went down to 12, and this week they're down to 8. So I think things are heading in the right direction. I've been using some GFO, and phosphates are holding steady at about .1 after spiking to .2. I don't want it to go down any more until the nitrates go down, so I'm keeping the gfo in small amounts and not changing it often. I move the ricordea rock back here from the 40g about a week ago, and so far they're all doing fine, as are all the corals that I kept in this tank. So I'm optimistic that things aren't getting worse any more, and they seem to be getting better. Fingers crossed! You have certainly put a lot of effort into this tank and I am happy to hear that it seems that things are moving in the right direction. 1 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 16, 2017 Author Share Posted January 16, 2017 You have certainly put a lot of effort into this tank and I am happy to hear that it seems that things are moving in the right direction. Thanks, Dawn! Nitrates crept back up from 8 to 12, so late this evening I scrubbed and siphoned the back chambers again. I pulled out every rock but only found a few spots to scrub. Then I vacuumed the gravel again and put some peroxide on the zoas which were starting to look like they needed a little cleaning. This ended up being a little more than a 4g water change. Finally, I added some MB7, which I've been doing weekly, sometimes bi-weekly. I left the carbon and gfo unchanged as they're only a week old. All the corals that I've kept in here have continued to do fine, monticaps, hammer, rics, zoas, etc. So I'm going to stay the course and keep cleaning until it either stabilizes or I give up in exhaustion 3 Quote Link to comment
ninjamyst Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 I am surprised your nitrate is high despite dosing mb7. 1 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 18, 2017 Author Share Posted January 18, 2017 Yeah, me too. But I don't dose it daily, and I've been putting tons of nutrients into the tank by cleaning the rocks, crushing vermetid snails, and vacuuming sand. Plus I have five fish Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 18, 2017 Author Share Posted January 18, 2017 FTS from after the last round of cleaning. Things really don't look bad other than all the rocks piled up and scraps of monticap laying around 2017-01-16 IM10 FTS by TeenyReef, on Flickr 6 Quote Link to comment
DaveFason Posted January 18, 2017 Share Posted January 18, 2017 " Monti Bio-Tope " 2 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 19, 2017 Author Share Posted January 19, 2017 " Monti Bio-Tope " Lol, it does look like a volcano just vomited out frags of monticap 1 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 25, 2017 Author Share Posted January 25, 2017 Long time, no update! I haven't posted any pictures because the tank still looks exactly like it did in the last picture. Which is great news, because I haven't pulled rocks for scrubbing or vacuumed the sand, or even changed the water since then. I was out of town last week, and I've been super busy with work since then. Since the tank seems to have stabilized a bit, I just haven't taken the time to even do a water change, and instead I'm keeping my hands out of the tank and just letting it run. I will probably do a water change soon but I'm really excited that things are finally looking good. No new algae growth, and I've only scraped the glass once or twice over the last week. During the water change, I plan to pull the rocks one more time and scrub any spots that look like they need it, but it's definitely down to spot treatments now. If it stays this good until the weekend, I'll probably try moving some corals back into the tank then, just to see how they do. 3 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 26, 2017 Author Share Posted January 26, 2017 I'm starting a new frag tank! This will give me some place to store the corals from this tank while I wait for things to stabilize again. The build thread is here: http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/379846-teenyreefs-db30-frag-tank/ 2 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 29, 2017 Author Share Posted January 29, 2017 I just finished doing a water change and it was a bit of a disaster. I did the usual deep cleaning I've been doing, pulled all the rocks out, scrubbed any bad spots I could see, and vacuumed all the sand. In general everything is looking much better. When I put the rocks back in, the emerald crab ended up in the bottom of the bucket. I picked him up the put him in the tank, and he wiggled and flew out of my hand. Right behind the piano. Hilarity ensures. Fortunately, he got caught up in some electrical cords and I was able to retrieve him after about five minutes. Then, after refilling the tank, I noticed the alk dosing tube had a big long chunk of solidified solution hanging off of it. So I turned off the pumps and tried to get it, and of course it broke off and fell into the back chamber. Since I don't want a huge alk spike, I siphoned out all the water in the back chamber. While I was siphoning out the back chamber, the siphon tube knocked over a quart container full of salt water, which spilled all over the desk, desk drawers, computer, and the carpet. Fortunately nothing blew up and I was able to clean it all up. I think I'm ready for a beer now 8 Quote Link to comment
fishfreak0114 Posted January 30, 2017 Share Posted January 30, 2017 Wow that's quite the waterchange! 1 Quote Link to comment
Nano sapiens Posted February 2, 2017 Share Posted February 2, 2017 I think I'm ready for a beer now Some water change days are just like that, but luckily just a few 1 Quote Link to comment
jstuver Posted February 3, 2017 Share Posted February 3, 2017 Curious as to what you run your nanobox settings at? You may have said it in the past but I'm too lazy to go back through;) 1 Quote Link to comment
FlowerMama Posted February 3, 2017 Share Posted February 3, 2017 Wow, yes, definitely have a beer after that water change. And another, you earned it!! 1 Quote Link to comment
teenyreef Posted February 4, 2017 Author Share Posted February 4, 2017 Some water change days are just like that, but luckily just a few It's what keeps this hobby interesting, right? Wow, yes, definitely have a beer after that water change. And another, you earned it!! Thanks, I did Curious as to what you run your nanobox settings at? You may have said it in the past but I'm too lazy to go back through;) At peak, I'm running Blue and Violet, and Royal Blue at 75%, and white/lime at 35%. 2 Quote Link to comment
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